Who can forget their first time? The lip-biting anticipation, the dimmed lights, the pounding rhythm, the enthusiastic shrieks, the fog machines

I’ve seen live concerts by everyone from AC/DC to Broken Social Scene to the Beastie Boys, but the loudest one I ever attended was also my first: the Bay City Rollers at the Ottawa Civic Centre. It was the height of Rollermania in the mid-1970s and the 10,000-seat venue was packed with screaming young fans, many of them kitted out in tartan and waving signs declaring their devotion to the lads from Edinburgh.

The stomping feet and sheer volume of vocalized adoration made the building shake, sending the water in the toilets up the sides of the bowls in time to the primal beat.

Funnily enough, the first show the leader of the Bay City Rollers saw also involved the loo.

“The first concert, I stole into because we didn’t have enough money to pay for the tickets. We climbed up the drain pipes into the gents’ toilets on the second floor of the Odeon Cinemas to watch Queen supporting David Bowie on the Changes tour,” singer Les McKeown recalls over the phone from Brandon, Man. “That was an eye-opener. That was good. I would tell my buddies who accompanied me, ‘That’s what I’m going to be!’ They were, ‘Yeah, yeah, OK.’ ”

But that dream soon came true for the young lad who was always singing, even while driving a horse-drawn cart on his route as a milkman.

In 1973, an 18-year-old McKeown became the lead singer for the Bay City Rollers, and the band topped the charts with songs like Saturday Night, Shang-A-Lang and I Only Want to be With You.

What was your first concert? Tweet it with @RuthMylesCH #firstconcert, share in the comments section below or email me at rmyles@calgaryherald.com. Click here to read about the first concert experiences of some notable Calgarians.

The Rollers racked up sales in excess of 100 million and even had a short-lived show on NBC before McKeown left the band in 1978. Now 57, McKeown is finishing up a 12-date Canadian tour with Les McKeown’s Bay City Rollers, playing venues such as The Deerfoot Inn & Casino.

Shades of Yesterday’s Hero abound (Sample lyric: Weren’t you on television ev’ry night?), Haven’t I seen you around?), but McKeown insists he’s having a great time delivering what the people want.

“I have an attitude that, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve sang this song so many times, and I really should be bored singing this song, but tonight the audience that paid good money to come and see me, it’s the first time for them, or it might be a long time since they’ve seen me sing this song, so I better be good,’” he says, before adding with a laugh, “And subsequently, I am good.”

McKeown is the sole member of the Rollers in the band, but he and the rest of the original gang (Alan Longmuir, Erik Faulkner, Stuart Wood and Derek Longmuir) have made up and reunited in a bid to reclaim the fortune they say they never got, despite the band’s record sales, frantic touring schedule and mountain of merchandise sales.

While he once dismissed the band’s legacy, these days McKeown celebrates the music that has brought so many people so much pleasure through the years. Being known for the hits might “pigeon hole” him as an artist, but it also brings the crowds.

“It’s a double-edged sword. Some people cannot cope with it. I found it very difficult to cope with myself, which led to all sorts of problems, but it also led to a much happier place for me. I had to go through a horrible 10, 15 years. It was more and more nightmarish in order to come out the other end feeling really happy,” he says.

So young! The Bay City Rollers in 1976.

“I am really glad there was such a change for me. It would have been rather sad, ending one’s life being a miserable old pop star.”

The light at the end of that pitch-black tunnel came in the form of a four-month stay in rehab for alcoholism. McKeown’s time at Passages in California in 2008/’09 was documented in Rehab, a series on British TV.

Part of learning about himself included the realization that living like a rock star 24/7 simply isn’t sustainable, either on a physical or an emotional level.

“You can’t live on that kind of adrenalin all the time,” he stresses. Time on stage provide him with one kind of nourishment, he says, but “when I go home, my son and my wife and the little animals that live in my home are my nourishment. I’m now comfortable with doing that, whereas before, when I was confused, I wasn’t able to see the difference and appreciate each for its different values.”

That said, being onstage is a high he wouldn’t trade.

“It might sound a little smarmy, but I get a lot of love. My nourishment is the audience. A lot of performers would admit this. The accolade you get from the audience is what we live for. It might be a bit needy, but that’s what we need.”

It’s not a one-way street, though.

The people beyond the lights provide the energy that fuels his performances, McKeown says.

“It is a connection. They might say, ‘You made me feel like I was a teenager again tonight for those two hours … or it’s a great memory they had when they were young kids and fell in love with this crazy little Scottish band from England when we were their whole world for a good couple of years. It was very intense. That’s why they’ve stuck with me all these years. I’m kind of like their first boyfriend.”

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